That Mitch, he’s a good guy, ain’t he?
This isn’t a sample snippet from a conversation between two mafiosos. It’s what a lot of Republican establishmentarians are uttering these days, trying desperately to think of ways to bring the always cautious senate Minority Leader Mitch “murder turtle” McConnell back into the good graces of former president Donald Trump. It’s a poorly kept secret that the two had a tepid-at-best relationship when Trump was battling furiously against the swamp creatures and their media pals during his four years in the White House, and then the situation finally blew up into open enmity after the “mostly peaceful” protest on January 6th.
Now that the dust has settled on the unfortunate event, the facts reveal that most of the damage was fostered by a small core of overzealous agitators who will receive their due. Then there was the much larger contingent of liberty-loving avid Trump fans who just walked through the capitol building as though it were a big marble tourist attraction. Were they supposed to be there? Probably not. But like a responsible golfer would exit a sand bunker, they left it as they found it.
The Democrats and their media flunkies are the ones maintaining the lie that it was a “murderous insurrection” and that hundreds of legislators’ lives were in danger, including former vice president Mike Pence’s. The only person shot on that day was fervent Trump backer Ashli Babbitt, and the feds have already determined that they’ll neither release the name of the capitol police officer who shot her nor investigate the matter further. It certainly looks as though if you’re a conservative who’s killed by the police, your life isn’t important enough to make a fuss over.
Enough said on the government’s hypocrisy. Unlike the leftist miscreants rioting and looting after the strange shooting in Minneapolis last week, conservatives don’t burn buildings and trash stuff with their outrage. No, liberty lovers seek recompense through the electoral process.
Which brings us back to Trump and McConnell. Last week, “Cocaine Mitch” showed signs of trying to make amends with Trump. Some liberal pundits think there’s danger ahead for the GOP because of it. In a piece titled “McConnell vs. Trump: Why the GOP Is Right to Worry,” Jeff Greenfield wrote at Politico Magazine:
“For Republican leaders, the urgent call is to find some way toward a truce of sorts. If the party can manage to hold itself together, it knows full well that history will be on its side as it seeks to retake the House and Senate, given what normally happens to a president’s party in the midterms.
“They also know what happens when a headline figure who becomes power hungry, or really doesn’t care about the collateral damage, goes after members of his own party. When FDR tied to ‘purge’ Democrats in 1938, the party lost 72 House seats and seven Senate seats. Theodore Roosevelt’s third-party run against Taft doomed the Republican to a humiliating third-place finish in 1912.”
Greenfield seems to know his political history, but what happened in 1938 and 1912 has very little bearing on what’s going on in 2021 and what will happen in 2022. In the first half of the 20th century, the United States was a very different place than it is now. The industrial revolution and rapid internal economic growth were taking place prior to WW I, and the nation was still trying to find its equilibrium after the Civil War.
1938 was in the midst of the Great Depression. FDR was vying to vastly expand executive power (see his 1937 court packing proposals, which don’t look all that different than senile Joe Biden’s current attempts to do the same) to push his socialistic New Deal programs. The people rebelled against the drastic power grab, which led to massive Democrat losses. The late 30’s isn’t analogous to today. Sorry, Mr. Greenfield.
The personal dust-up between Trump and McConnell is small potatoes compared with the strife of those times. But America itself is at stake now. Trump sees the establishment leader as a major impediment to his MAGA agenda. And the Kentuckian’s lack of fight won’t ever improve.
“Trump, too, took down the Republican establishment in 2016, and seems completely unchastened by his loss in 2020. Any plea to Trump to turn down the heat ignores a lifetime’s worth of behavior. Asking Trump not to insult those who have offended him is like asking him not to exhale,” Greenfield concluded.
Hardy har har! Liberal commentator Greenfield made a joke about Trump being selfish and rude and endangering the whole of the Republican Party because he’s a boorish, uncaring jerk who’s only in it for himself! Wow, that’s a new one, isn’t it? The writer knows his history and dates but doesn’t quite get what’s taking place now with conservatives at the grassroots level. By defending McConnell and all of the GOP’s establishment headliners, Jeff’s showing his ignorant stripes.
In essence, by his words in Florida, Trump was paying now Majority Leader “Chucky” Schumer a backhanded compliment at the same time he was dissing McConnell. “If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it,” Trump said.
Is Trump’s observation not true? Schumer and his equally ferocious House colleague Nancy Pelosi fight like yipping hyenas devouring and defending a kill whenever anyone in their party is attacked by an outsider, no matter how justified. If it’d been President Hillary Clinton who was on the receiving end of a 2020 electoral loss where there were thousands of uninvestigated claims of voter fraud and irregularities, you could bet your family’s retirement savings that “Chucky” and “Nancy” would’ve held out until their very last bubble of spittle was burst -- and then some.
Conservatives don’t admire Democrats for hardly anything, but the liberals’ ruthlessness and willingness to tussle for power is praiseworthy at the very least. When was the last time you saw any of the Democrat leaders -- or any Democrat, period, save for maybe former Hawaii rep Tulsi Gabbard and a couple Florida pols who defended Ron DeSantis from the scurrilous 60 Minutes hit piece a couple weeks back -- backtrack on something related to their greater mission? Can’t think of any? Me neither.
Take the recent border travesty as an example. Democrats from high to low wouldn’t call it a “crisis” (again, except for “moderate” Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar, whose district has been overrun by illegals) despite the completely obvious chaos created by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of uninvited invaders. What did senile Joe and the rest of his party members say about it? Nothing. The verbal gymnastics they engaged in was Gold Medal worthy.
It would take an influx of illegal aliens setting up Guatemalan food cooking stations on the White House lawn for Democrats to comment on it, and even then, Schumer and Pelosi would probably pass it off as squatters just giving Dr. Jill some international cuisine preparation tips.
McConnell shows no such similar willingness to get dirty in a scrap with the opposition. That’s what Trump was commenting on. Republican voters don’t care about Trump’s rhetoric the way Democrats, #NeverTrumpers and the media does. The struggle for the heart of the GOP continues, and will keep going until the party’s elected leaders show the same kind of all-out mentality that Trump does.
Conservative voters don’t want wimps. They want boat-rockers and brawlers, because that’s what it takes to prevail in these awful times. If Republicans want to win back congressional control in 2022, they’d better take a page from Trump’s book and learn how to throw a few political body blows… and not apologize if one (or more) of them lands below the belt.
Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me. Take that, “good guy” Mitch.
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